Mel Brooks’s insular spoof on the old Universal Pictures horror series — it doesn’t reach very far in any direction, but it expends a good deal of comic energy within the narrow confines. Basically, it resembles the sort of affectionate parody of old movies common on the Carol Burnett Show, …
Jacques Demy's hommage to the MGM musical, and in specific to Gene Kelly, who is accorded a key role (and a grand entrance) on screen. The central players, paired this one time only, are real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorleac (the latter killed in a car wreck soon after …
A full tankard of gemütlich-kitsch about the ripening genius Goethe (handsome Alexander Fehling) who rouses his sleepy muse by falling hard for the provincial beauty Charlotte Buff (totally engaging and sexy Miriam Stein, who has a bold touch of Debra Winger). Philipp Stölzl’s beautifully outfitted and photographed movie is in …
This is, as the title serves warning, a youth Western, which would seem for starters a cunning enough way to lure the bulk of Eighties moviegoers back into theaters to view the newborn of this vanishing breed. And the very young screenwriter John Fusco, who earlier had written the Crossroads …
The sequel to the unnumbered Young Guns of 1988 tells the version of the Billy the Kid legend that would (and did) attract the attention of the NBC-TV series Unsolved Mysteries, the version in which the Kid emerges from the desert in 1950 as an old codger calling himself Brushy …
Documentary on a Massachusetts touring chorus of very senior citizens who perform a repertoire of punk and rock: the Ramones, the Clash, the Bee Gees, Talking Heads, Sonic Youth, James Brown, that ilk. It looks like fun for them, and a fair amount of that fun trickles down to the …
Roman centurion Sean Bean goes looking for the boy Jesus, long before Roman Centurion Joseph Fiennes went looking for the risen Jesus, and almost as long before Roman centurion George Clooney stumbled upon the crucified Jesus. Cyrus Nowrasteh directs.
This is John Ford’s America, so buttons burst and suspenders stretch and you leave the theater enlarged all ’round. There are some lovely, studied scenic effects, brawnily sculpted or deftly draped, before Ford settles down, as he is prone to do, to a blustery courtroom carnival. With Henry Fonda as …
Luis Buñuel's racial (and obliquely pedophiliac) drama, set in South Carolina but shot in Mexico, is undeniably lurid. But the stubborn individuality of the thing -- the individuality of the characters as well as of their director -- gives it much in common with art, nothing at all in common …
'Bout time we started getting some drought-themed anxiety cinema, wouldn't you say?
An observational documentary set in post conflict Belfast’s Ardoyne, where a marginalized, working class community has for generations been plagued by poverty, drugs and guns. This film charts the dream of Headmaster Kevin McArevey and his dedicated, visionary team illustrating how critical thinking and pastoral care can empower and encourage …
A British black comedy with a lightness of touch, though not of shade, and with a Heavenly Creatures sort of cheekiness about a case of True Crime. It languishes a bit during the psychopathic hero's rehabilitation and never fully recovers during his relapse, but the cartoonishly uncomplicated face of Hugh …
And the young Albert. (Psst, wanna see the Queen in her teddies?) The story of the first occupant of the spanking new Buckingham Palace is a story of protofeminist liberation — “Even a palace can be a prison” — and a testament to the capacity of British thespians, specifically Emily …
The most overproduced James Bond escapade -- in Sean Connery's tenure -- gains a firm foothold in memory on the basis of the aerial dogfight won by Bond in his toy helicopter, and the climactic assault on a rocket launching pad hidden inside a Japanese volcano. Karin Dor, Donald Pleasence; …